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All along Twenty-third Street open coffee shop doors vent the piquant smell of their product, its sapor corralling customer after customer. The sounds of traffic are caught in a rolling breeze, a wild western wind that steers me into one of the innumerable cafés. Usually I avoid caffeine— I’m not Mormon: but I find that it derails an equanimity that is so often expected of me. I order my coffee black, and without cream or sugar. No, wait… I deserve a little extra—Wal-Mart’s newest floor manager should not drink straight coffee. So I pay for a muffin, too—it’s chocolate, and swirls of cheesecake hypnotize my sweet tooth.

Not wanting to spoil a prim estival morning, I juggle my newly bought goodies, manage my way through a crowd of people looking rather hangdog, junkies in need of their fix, and settle into a bohemianesque thatched chair. Taking a sip of coffee I survey the scene. Outside there are very few people visible; for they have all congregated in the java houses or hurried to their hatchbacks and SUVs. The muffin looks quite enticing, but a pessimistic voice disquietly whispers differently: “It’ll be like eating chalk,” it says. I am loath to take the first bite. A quivering jaw gives in, taking a pea-size chunk out of it. Instead, it tastes just as a sapid treat should, the chocolate like black desire risen from a cauldron. Moreover, it tastes like… like Brazilian chocolate—the good stuff—and the flavor of the cheesecake is tantamount to the chocolates. As I am enjoying my morning before the work bell tolls, my face a balloon inflated with the now spent delectable, a couple, a man and a woman, walk past me and into a store, their hands clasped amorously about one another.

My coffee is gone; the muffin, too. And left with an hour to waste before I have to be in, I sat watching the traffic lights change from green to red, to yellow to green to red again.